OnePlus 5 First Impressions – Should You Consider Buying The OnePlus 5?

The Chinese startup OnePlus launched their new flagship or should we say ‘The Flagship Killer‘ OnePlus 5 recently. The OnePlus 5 is the one that updates the OnePlus lineup following its predecessor the OnePlus 3T. This time the company has made two variants of their device like they did before with different memory and storage options. Let us now talk about the all new OnePlus 5 smartphone and see whether it can bend or break its competition or not.

Talking about Design:

One can say, the OnePlus kind-of still follows the same design language. The front of OnePlus 5 mostly looks the same as a OnePlus 3T. It has considerable amount of bezel covering its 5.5 inch display above which we can find the sensors, earpiece and the camera. Below the screen we have the hardware home key that also has the embedded ceramic fingerprint sensor. The bezels of this phone is said to be 10% narrower than the OnePlus 3T

On the back, it looks like an iPhone 7 Plus with the dual-camera setup placement. It may not impress a lot of fans as it is not something unique like it was always from OnePlus. There is still the OnePlus logo at the center of the anodized aluminum back panel. The left side holds the phone’s volume buttons and mute slider. At the right, it has the power button and the SIM card slot. The headphone jack, speaker, microphone and USB Type-C charging port are at the bottom.

The OnePlus 5 is slimmer than the 3T and is apparently the slimmest smartphone from them. It is also lighter than the 3T at just 153 grams. Overall, the design is revamped with this new look.

About its Features & Specifications:

The OnePlus 5 has a 5.5 inch Full HD Optic AMOLED display with 401 ppi. It is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 octa core processor that is clocked at 2.45 GHz (four cores clocked at 2.45 GHz and four cored clocked at 1.9 GHz). This is Qualcomm’s fastest processor and OnePlus 5 is the third smartphone to bring it to India. There are two RAM options we can choose from i.e 6 GB and 8 GB. Flagships like Samsung Galaxy S8 and LG G6 in the current market has 6 GB of RAM which is more than enough for any tasks. So the 8 GB variant is too huge and we can say, it makes it more future-proof here. The 6 GB variant comes with 64 GB internal storage while the 8 GB has 128 GB.

The smartphone runs OxygenOS 4.5 which is based on Android 7.1.1 Nougat. The new OxygenOS from the OnePlus is much lighter and closer to stock Android and has few new features like Reading mode etc. The UI has no bloat too and even the animations during opening and closing apps have been minimized. These changes among others are made to speed up the UI for the users. The smartphone has dual SIM (Nano SIM) support as usual with 4G LTE network.

On the side of optics, OnePlus has took the dual-camera route like LG and Apple. Like we mentioned, the look of it is a lot like an iPhone 7 Plus. The rear cameras are a 16MP primary and a 20MP secondary camera. The 16MP camera has a Sony IMX398 sensor with f/1.7 aperture and EIS (Electronic Image Stabilisation). The 20MP is a telephoto camera that uses Sony IMX350 sensor with f/2.6 aperture and PDAF (Phase Detection Autofocus). Front facer is a Sony IMX371 sensor 16MP camera with f/2.0 aperture and EIS. This dual-rear camera setup is claimed to be world’s highest resolution dual camera.

The camera can take images in RAW format and shoot videos upto 4K resolution. The OnePlus camera also brings Pro photography mode which has improved a bit in the OnePlus 5. Additional to ISO, White Balance, Shutter speed and Depth of field adjusting options, it now has brightness control. The front camera has an option to use the on-screen flash while taking selfies. This was not found in OnePlus 3T’s OxygenOS 4.1.6.

Other features, the regular connectivity features – dual band Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 5.0, A-GPS, NFC, 3.5mm audio jack and USB Type-C port are present. The OnePlus 5 has a 3300 mAh Li-Po battery that is non-removable. This is actually 100 mAh lower than OnePlus 3T’s 3400 mAh. It is possibly because of the sleeker build of the phone but it still does not fail to perform. It can last one day on medium usage and you can easily get more with the battery saver mode. OnePlus 5 has the Dash Charging technology from the company which can charge up your phone from 1% to 40% within just 20 minutes. This is quite faster than the most other fast charging technologies in current smartphones. But the phone lacks wireless charging feature.

Final Words

As usual, OnePlus didn’t quite fail to deliver their flagship that can beat lot of other premium smartphones at a price that can convince a lot. The 6 GB OnePlus 5 costs Rs. 32,999 while the 8 GB variant costs Rs. 37,999. This is now the priciest product from OnePlus with many new additions. It is definitely a strong new smartphone at the ~35k market that will most likely succeed. The cheaper 6 GB variant will attract more users and it is also what we consider to be a wise buy.

Feel Free to share your thoughts in the comment section below.
Don't forget to follow us on Twitter, like our Facebook Fan Page and Add us to your circles on Google+ to keep you updated with the latest technology news, gadget reviews, launches around the world and much more